(Sunday Paper, Year VI, Issue 4)

The term “wall calendar” is not new.

It’s a whole genre of calendar - the kind that hangs on the wall.

I am old-fashioned - I still like to keep a calendar hanging on a nail in the kitchen wall - it’s good for appointments that affect the whole family, especially in busy, non-pandemic times.

It’s also how I keep track of family birthdays that don’t stick in my brain.

With the digitalization of calendars I know a lot of people have moved on from those types of analog calendars…but I take it a step further by doubling down on the analog.

As long-time readers know I usually get excited to buy a planner for the upcoming year around October…and that’s where I keep the more personal schedule.

This year I didn’t get a 2021 planner…but I do have appointments I need to keep track of.

So I have turned to a different kind of wall calendar.

You can see it in the picture above.

Five index cards for Monday through Friday (no weekend obligations on this end yet), and some little yellow stickies for the appointments.

Those stickies are work-related - they’re going to be up there for the foreseeable future.

If I have a different appointment - like the dentist, which I had a couple of weeks ago, or the eye doctor, which I have coming in a couple of weeks - I add a different sticky that only reminds me like a week or two out.

It’s a good little system for an odd time in my life - it wouldn't work if I had multiple comedy shows in a week, for example.

Things are slowly getting back to normal in certain ways - the girls have had dance class in person most of the past five months or so, and that’s made for some busy afternoons…but they’re still home for school during the day and the other activities that have busied up our winters in the past haven’t been happening this year.

For me, personally, I was less obsessive in the past year or so about counting every single comedy show I did…but I still enjoyed marking up my calendar with the red ink I used for comedy and seeing red fill the pages more and more each month - starting with the second Saturday of every month at Exhibit ‘A’.

I’ll get excited about a planner again - hopefully as soon as 2022.

But for now I’ll try to enjoy the simplicity of appointments here and there from Monday through Friday.

Notes

*I guess if I wanted to look real busy I could add the weekly events to the wall that I’ve come to regard as ‘passage of time’ markers: Post something on Wednesday, bring the compost to the curb on Friday (late Thursday night), post the Sunday Paper (Sunday morning), and put the garbage out (Sunday night/Monday morning). But I don’t want to look that busy.

*Not unrelated to the topic of calendars, I have a vitamin update for you longtime readers: Got some new Vitamin D and Vitamin C recently. The Vitamin C won’t last much past March…but the next time I’ll need a bottle of Vitamin D will be Thanksgiving! Hard to believe 2021 has gone by so fast.

*I know I’m not telling you anything new here - but I’m still thinking about the poem read by Amanda Gorman at the inauguration on Wednesday. On Wednesday I posted video of her performance - if you want to read the poem you can click here. I have read it a few times over the past few days, and I think what strikes me the most about it is its accessibility despite its complexity. I think it’s a great teaching tool for students to learn about poetry…I wish I had read a poem like this when I was in school. “Oh, you can rhyme it here and there but give it a certain rhythm and include a tremendously powerful message?” I feel like this one work has helped me understand poetry in a way I never really did before.

*There was a lot of greatness about Wednesday. Gorman was a standout…and it was also really emotional to see Eugene Goodman there escorting Kamala Harris in.

*I realized this week Wednesdays are a good opportunity to share other people’s work in addition to posting goofy pictures every so often. So that’ll be part of “Every Week On Wednesday” as the year unfolds as well.

*You can keep tabs on that by Liking the Facebook page, if you haven’t already. You can also follow me on Twitter.

*If you’re into new and different Super Bowl matchups (I most certainly am), root for Green Bay and Buffalo today. (Tampa works too, but I think it’s time for them to lose.)